


She's Got Style

by rhymeswithmonth



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Everyone is Gender swapped, F/F, Girl!Blaine, Girl!Kurt, lesbian love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 10:50:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhymeswithmonth/pseuds/rhymeswithmonth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes she wants to just open her mouth and scream as loud as she can at the injustice of the fact that Finn can make out with Naomi Puckerman for seven minutes during a game of truth or dare at Quinn Fabray's birthday party and be called "hot" by everyone there, but if Kate dares to even glance up in the locker room after gym, Azalia Adams calls her a dyke and Dana Karofsky shoves her into a locker so hard it breaks skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She's Got Style

It's not like Kate doesn't know that her mother loves her, but she does know that she isn't what her parents had expected.

Eliot Hummel had always been the one who'd understood her. He'd been an effortless parent, open and unconcerned when Kate had announced that she wanted shoes like G.I. Joes for her fifth birthday instead of the princess style sandals that the other girls in her kindergarten class were so crazy about. Bernice had stuttered and fretted, but her husband had calmly kissed her cheek and special ordered the tiniest pair of combat boots available.

After Eliot passed away, Bernice had done her best to continue nurturing their daughter's unique personality, and for the most part she succeeded. But there were shaky patches when the small-town voice in her heart had protested. When Kate hadn't let her hair grow back after shaving it to match her father's chemotherapy bare scalp, instead continuing to buzz the back of her head short. When she refused to go to the ballet class Bernie signed her up for in favour of playing quietly by herself outside, when they came home from the mall with bags of ripped jeans and army jackets instead of floral dresses and ballet flats. But no matter how often Bernice flinched at the choices her daughter made, she bites back her doubts, strokes her hair and tells her never to change.

But it would be so much easier if Finn weren't so darn perfect. She's model-tall but not too skinny; curvy in all the right ways. Her brown hair is soft and shiny down to her waist, and she lets Bernice brush it out and twist it into elaborate braids, just like she'd done before Kate had cut hers all off.

Carl tries, in the little time he's not at the hospital, to bond. But there's a fine line between Tom-boy and what Kate is, one that basically everybody misreads. They can't seem to understand that just because she doesn't cake her face with makeup or gush about boys doesn't mean she wants to _be_ a boy. She knows that when Carl offers her a beer with a wink and invites her to watch the game, that he's reaching out in the only way he knows.

But Carl is _Finn's_ dad, and as much as Kate really does like him, he's just the guy who is dating her mother. It's been just Kate and Bernie for so long, and it hurts to feel her slipping away, laughing with Finn about reality TV, taking her to the shop to arrange flowers, helping with her makeup.

It goes against everything she's built for herself, but Kate sucks it up, puts on the single dress she owns - the pale blue one from her cousin's wedding - pins her bangs back with a sparkly silver barrette she steals from Finn, and makes out with Brett on the couch.

It's stupid and shallow and pointless because she's already told her mom that she likes girls, but watching her crush stealing away the affections of her only surviving parent made her desperate, so for a dark week she pretends to be a normal, straight, girly girl. She wears a push-up bra under a white sleeveless blouse, sings a gooey, heavily gendered Taylor Swift song in glee club, and lets the midfielder from the soccer team carry her books to class.

It earns her interested _looks_ from boys that make her skin crawl, and baffled ones from her friends that make her heart ache. In the end she cries and her mom cries and pulls her into a full-body hug where she leans against her familiar body and inhales the scent of flowers and Bernice whispers words of love into her ear.

 

 

Sometimes she wants to just open her mouth and scream as loud as she can at the injustice of the fact that Finn can make out with Naomi Puckerman for seven minutes during a game of truth or dare at Quinn Fabray's birthday party and be called "hot" by everyone there, but if Kate dares to even glance up in the locker room after gym, Azalia Adams calls her a dyke and Dana Karofsky shoves her into a locker so hard it breaks skin.

Naomi wears leather jackets and skater shoes, she has a lip ring and, allegedly, a nipple ring too. She sings macho rock songs along with her beat-up old guitar and has a freaking Mohawk and yet Kate is the one the student body goes at for being mannish. They throw paint on her doc-martins and smear gum in her hair and call her "dyke", "lesbo", "carpet-muncher" and more. She doesn't even wear men's clothes, but apparently the uncultured mob has never heard of androgyny before, no matter how trendy the concept is becoming in the fashion world.

 

 

Early on in their friendship, Mackenzie had developed the most awkward of awkward crushes on Kate. Kate hadn't been out at that point, but she hasn't exactly been in either, and it had caught her entirely off guard; a boy had never liked her before.

It had been a delicate situation; Kate genuinely liked Mackenzie, and for the first time in her post-pubescent life she'd begun to wonder if this was what having a best friend felt like. Mackenzie is like Kate, unpopular, quietly trying to make it through high school without losing his identity, and Kate didn't want theirs to be just another friendship that bows to the stereotype that men and women can't be friends. So she maybe panicked and pretended to be in love with Raphael in order to stop the tension growing between them.

The fallout was predictably messy, with Mackenzie throwing a tearful tantrum in the parking lot in front of the entire soccer team, and kicking over Kate's bike in frustration. But he'd always been an emotional person, and was genuinely sorry the next day, even paying for the repairs to the bent handle-bar. That day was the first time Kate ever said the words aloud -/I'm gay/. Mackenzie had been accepting in his own way, his family was very religious but he didn't respond with hatred or disgust. But it was still frustrating to be asked "are you sure?" And "what if you just haven't let the right boy?"

 

 

No matter what she does, it feels like she's always letting people down. She joins the cheer squad to try and get Finn to notice her in junior year. She spends a week at the bottom of the pyramid between Shae-Ann Tinsley and Dana Karofsky with Maddy Rutherford's knee in her back before Naomi and Coach Kendra get in a fight that causes the girl to quit the team the day of their final competition. Michaela Chang is out with a rolled ankle, and Finn is too heavy to top the formation, so Kate has her glorious minute as star of the Cheerio's nationals finale. But even bringing home that giant trophy doesn't made her feel like part of the team, so she quits and tried something else.

If everyone at McKinley wants her to be butch and manly, she'll give them butch and manly. All it takes is one word and her mom is in Mrs Figgan's office, citing Kate's right to play on the school's only soccer team and reciting the school's policy on giving any student a fair tryout. Kate is actually good at soccer, fast and agile enough to dodge and weave around most of the guys, and Coach Stu has always been a revolutionary. Kate makes the team and drags Mackenzie, whose solid build makes for grade A checking, along with her.

It's surprisingly nice to be part of a team. Quinn may be sanctimonious douche, Santiano a malevolent asshole, and Brett the epitome of brawn before brains, but they take team solidarity seriously. Also? Kate rocks the letter jacket.

But all of it, the cheerleading, the soccer team, it's for other people. They aren't for _her_. Glee is Kate's thing, and she'll never not be proud of it. She snuggles up under Mackenzie's arm, feet curled in Tim's lap with Raphael on the floor in front of them and watches Finn paint Aria's toenails on movie night and can honestly say that she loves these people. Even after Quinn and his posse join and the club gains more members, Kate is still one of the originals, one of the people who built this club from the ground and made it, if not yet championship worthy then on its way.

 

 

It's a weird adjustment to start calling Mrs Del Monico Ms Shuester after her oddly public fiasco of a divorce goes through, but they'll get used to it. They all agree that they need to do everything in their power to be there for their teacher, after everything she's been through at the hands of her ex. They only know what Quinn of all people tells them, some far-fetched ploy where Terrence Del Monico had apparently tried to hire him to sabotage his wife's birth control in order to try and save their failing marriage with an unwanted pregnancy.

Sometimes Kate steps back from it all and lets herself acknowledge how strange their little club really is. It can't be normal for one heartfelt group number from a dozen teenagers to so visibly cheer up a thirty year old woman whose entire life has just been uprooted, but it seems to do just that. The past few months have been rocky for the club because Ms Shuester is so emotionally invested in it, so the decline of her marriage had been felt by them all. It's a relief for it to finally reach an end.

Two weeks later Ms Shuester comes to school dolled up in her best cardigan and giggles at everything Mr Pillsbury says. But just when it looks like things are going to go smoothly, Carly the very attractive hygienist steps onto the scene and they're off once again.

 

 

Samantha Evans is beautiful in a way that whispers of fields of corn under cloudless cornflower skies. She lets her flaxen hair fall un-styled to her shoulders, her plush lips pink with watermelon lip-gloss. She wears cargo pants and ratty converse shoes, and Kate hopes against logic that she's gay too.

Even when she's snatched up by the Cheerios the day after transferring, Kate clings to the slim chance. Sammy is just so nice to her, still uncorrupted by the dark whispers of the other girls. Finn and Naomi corner Kate one day after glee, with warnings and threats respectively about what will happen if Kate keeps trying to be Sammy's friend. It's so unfair, all Kate wants is to sing a little duet with another girl, it's not that big of a deal, Santiano and Brett sing "brotastic" songs together all the time.

But it's soon clear that Sammy has her beautiful green eyes set on Quinn Fabray, and despite the fact that the captain of the soccer team is currently supposed to be dating Finn again, Kate has no doubt that the interest is mutual.

Eventually they become friends, Sammy's goofy and funny and not the brightest and Kate is beginning to think that she might have a type.

 

 

The wedding is everything Kate had been dreaming it would be. Carl looks dashing in his classic black tux, and Bernie is a vision in the ivory drop-waist sweetheart gown that the two of them had picked together. Kate and Finn stood beside the alter as the only bridesmaids, in gorgeous fitted tuxedos that Finn had gracefully agreed to without a moment of hesitation.

 

 

It takes a month before Kate realizes that Blair isn't as perfect as she'd seemed when they first met.

It hits one day when Kate pops by Blair's room, as she usually does so that they can walk to the main building together, to find the other girl still in pajamas.

She'd slept through her alarm and unlike Kate is lucky enough to have a single, so she's scrambling to get ready. Kate flushes as Blair strips in front of her, unaware as usual of the effect that she's having, and scrambles to assemble her uniform. Her long black hair isn't in it's customary braid, and it's riotously curly. Kate would never have guessed, Blair always looks so effortlessly neat and orderly, her vest never seems to bunch like Kate's does, her socks stay up and perfectly white, skirt pleats flat. She watches in vague fascination as her friend gathers the virtual bush growing out of her head into a messy bun, cursing their lack of time.

When they meet up at break her hair is back as it always is, pulled back tight to her skull into an immaculate fishtail and sprayed into place. When Kate mentions it, she laughs self-deprecatingly and bemoans the fact that she hadn't inherited more of her Filipino father's genes.

As they grow closer, and eventually (finally!) start dating, Kate comes to realize that all of Blair is made up of curls and twists, carefully held back but striving to escape. Some of it comes out in her performances, when she's bouncing about on stage, flashing her skirt cheekily and batting her lashes, and it never fails to take Kate's breath away.

Kate had developed an infatuation for a girl who she saw as a beacon of hope in a hostile, bigoted world. Blair had swooped down the main staircase at Crawford County Day, grabbed her by the hand and introduced her to a place where she could be safe. Kate had idolized that girl, seen how she could be beautiful, smart, talented, the sweetest person in the world, _and popular_ , and built her up in her mind as this idealized figure of lesbianhood

That Blair doesn't exist, but Kate is rapidly falling in love with the girl who takes her place. Blair is wonderfully flawed. She wishes her legs were longer so she spends eighty dollars on a pair of shoes that look exactly like Crawford's general issue Mary Janes except a full inch higher. She has a pair of prescription cat-eye glasses but wears contacts except when she's alone in her room. Her body hair is dark and coarse and she hates it, but Kate kind of thinks that the tiny line between her bellybutton and panty line is sexy. She learned how to play half a dozen instruments in hopes that her busy parents would show up at the occasional recital.

Kate loves that Blair is comfortable enough with her to let the perfect mask drop away, let down her hair, kick of her platform heels and be herself. When she comes home with Kate for a long weekend in Lima, they spend three rainy days in sweatpants and baggy shirts, not a stitch of makeup to be seen. Kate spends an hour running her fingers through Blair's curls until its one frizzy mess against her bedspread, and they sing along with Kate's iPod, unapologetically switching around pronouns to suit their needs.

 


End file.
